AVE MARIA
   
   
   Mothers of America
                                   let your kids go to the movies!
   get them out of the house so they won't know what you're up to
   it's true that fresh air is good for the body
                                                                 but what about the soul
   that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images
   and when you grow old as grow old you must
                                                                   they won't hate you
   they won't criticize you they won't know
                                                                they'll be in some glamorous country
   they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey

   they may even be grateful to you
                                                     for their first sexual experience
   which only cost you a quarter
                                                 and didn't upset the peaceful home
   they will know where candy bars come from
                                                                       and gratuitous bags of popcorn
   as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it's over
   with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg
   near the Williamsburg Bridge
                                                oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
   so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies
   they won't know the difference
                                                  and if somebody does it'll be sheer gravy
   and they'll have been truly entertained either way
   instead of hanging around the yard
                                                        or up in their room
                                                                                      hating you
   prematurely since you won't have done anything horribly mean yet
   except keeping them from the darker joys
                                                                   it's unforgivable the latter
   so don't blame me if you won't take this advice
                                                                          and the family breaks up
   and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set
                                                                                         seeing
   movies you wouldn't let them see when they were young

          [1960]

   TODAY
                         
                         
   Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
   You really are beautiful! Pearls,
   harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
   the stuff they've always talked about
                       
   still makes a poem a surprise!
   These things are with us every day
   even on beachheads and biers. They
   do have meaning. They're strong as rocks.


   [1950]

SLEEPING ON THE WING
           
           
 Perhaps it is to avoid some great sadness,
 as in a Restoration tragedy the hero cries "Sleep!
 O for a long sound sleep and so forget it!"
 that one flies, soaring above the shoreless city,
 veering upward from the pavement as a pigeon
 does when a car honks or a door slams, the door
 of dreams, life perpetuated in parti-colored loves
 and beautiful lies all in different languages.
 
 Fear drops away too, like the cement, and you
 are over the Atlantic. Where is Spain? where is
 who? The Civil War was fought to free the slaves,
 was it? A sudden down-draught reminds you of gravity
 and your position in respect to human love. But
 here is where the gods are, speculating, bemused.
 Once you are helpless, you are free, can you believe
 that? Never to waken to the sad struggle of a face?
 to travel always over some impersonal vastness,
 to be out of, forever, neither in nor for!
 
 The eyes roll asleep as if turned by the wind
 and the lids flutter open slightly like a wing.
 The world is an iceberg, so much is invisible!
 and was and is, and yet the form, it may be sleeping
 too. Those features etched in the ice of someone
 loved who died, you are a sculptor dreaming of space
 and speed, your hand alone could have done this.
 Curiosity, the passionate hand of desire. Dead,
 or sleeping? Is there speed enough? And, swooping,
 you relinquish all that you have made your own,
 the kingdom of your self sailing, for you must awake
 and breathe your warmth in this beloved image
 whether it's dead or merely disappearing,
 as space is disappearing and your singularity.



 [1957]

A STEP AWAY FROM THEM


It's my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches 
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.
                                          On
to Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.
A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of
a Thursday.
                   Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET'S
CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of
Federico Fellini, è bell' attrice.
And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.
             There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?
And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for BULLFIGHT and
the Manhattan Storage Warehouse,
which they'll soon tear down. I
used to think they had the Armory
Show there.
                   A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.


[1956]

SONG
            
            
I'm going to New York!
(what a lark! what a song!)
where the tough Rocky's eaves
hit the sea. Where th'Acro-
polis is functional, the trains
that run and shout! the books
that have trousers and sleeves!


I'm going to New York!
(quel voyage! jamais plus!)
far from Ypsilanti and Flint!
where Goodman rules the Empire
and the sunlight's eschato-
logy upon the wizard's bridges
and the galleries of print!


I'm going to New York!
(to my friends! mes semblables!)
I suppose I'll walk back West.
But for now I'm gone forever!
the city's hung with flashlights!
the Ferry's unbuttoning its vest!



[1951]

MUSIC          



        If I rest for a moment near The Equestrian
pausing for a liver sausage sandwich in the Mayflower Shoppe,
that angel seems to be leading the horse into Bergdorf's
and I am naked as a table cloth, my nerves humming.
Close to the fear of war and the stars which have disappeared.
I have in my hands only 35¢, it's so meaningless to eat!
and gusts of water spray over the basins of leaves
like the hammers of a glass pianoforte. If I seem to you
to have lavender lips under the leaves of the world,
      I must tighten my belt.
It's like a locomotive on the march, the season
      of distress and clarity
and my door is open to the evenings of midwinter's
lightly falling snow over the newspapers.
Clasp me in your handkerchief like a tear, trumpet
of early afternoon! in the foggy autumn.
As they're putting, up the Christmas trees on Park Avenue
I shall see my daydreams walking by with dogs in blankets,
put to some use before all those coloured lights come on!
      But no more fountains and no more rain,
      and the stores stay open terribly late.



[1954]

   SONG
           
           
   I am stuck in traffic in a taxicab
   which is typical
   and not just of modern life
             
   mud clambers up the trellis of my nerves
   must lovers of Eros end up with Venus
   muss es sein? es muss nicht sein, I tell you
   
   how I hate disease, it's like worrying
   that comes true
   and it simply must not be able to happen
   
   in a world where you are possible
   my love
   nothing can go wrong for us, tell me


   [1960]